Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon RX 580		13630 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 7240 (113%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 13 (87%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 580 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70144 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be quite a bit (about 104%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92208 (104%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be quite a bit (approximately 36%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10624 (36%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.